There Is Therefore Little Distinction Of Schools In Spain.
Murillo, the
glory of Seville, studied in Madrid, and the mighty Andalusian,
Velazquez, performed his enormous life's work in the capital of Castile.
It now needs but one word to show how the Museum of Madrid became so
rich in masterpieces. During the long and brilliant reigns of Charles V.
and Philip II., when art had arrived at its apogee in Italy, and was
just beginning its splendid career in Spain, these powerful monarchs had
the lion's share of all the best work that was done in the world. There
was no artist so great but he was honored by the commands of these lords
of the two worlds. They thus formed in their various palaces,
pleasure-houses, and cloisters a priceless collection of pictures
produced in the dawn of the Spanish and the triumphant hey-day of
Italian genius. Their frivolous successors lost provinces and kingdoms,
honor and prestige, but they never lost their royal prerogative nor
their taste for the arts. They consoled themselves for the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune by the delights of sensual life, and
imagined they preserved some distant likeness to their great forerunners
by encouraging and protecting Velazquez and Lope de Vega and other
intellectual giants of that decaying age. So while, as the result of a
vicious system of kingly and spiritual thraldom, the intellect of Spain
was forced away from its legitimate channels of thought and action,
under the shadow of the royal prerogative, which survived the genuine
power of the older kings, art flourished and bloomed, unsuspected and
unpersecuted by the coward jealousy of courtier and monk.
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